1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to piezoelectric elements, ink jet recording heads and ink jet printers.
2. Related Art
Piezoelectric elements including ferroelectric layers can function as actuators, and therefore are widely applicable to a variety of devices, such as, liquid jet heads of ink jet printers, gyro sensors and the like. When piezoelectric elements are used as liquid jet heads, a greater amount of displacement in the ferroelectric layer leads to an increased amount of liquid ejection. Also, piezoelectric elements may have a capacitor structure in which a ferroelectric layer is interposed between a lower electrode and an upper electrode. By arranging such capacitor structures with high density, high resolution images can be printed.
For manufacturing piezoelectric elements which can attain a large amount of displacement and are arranged with high density, highly accurate film forming process and patterning process are indispensable. However, these processes may cause damage to the ferroelectric layers, which results in an increased leakage current. To control such a leakage current, for example, JP-A-2003-243625 describes a method to protect a dielectric film by providing a barrier layer.